Thursday, October 14, 2010

In July, I paid tribute to the major league hurlers who had reached 100 mph in 2010. I will adapt that post here to encompass the entirety of the regular season. The data is presented in two tables: one sorted by number of pitches over 100 mph (technically 99.5 or higher), and the other sorted by maximum velocity.

Rank

Pitcher

#

1

Joel Zumaya

225

2

Henry Rodriguez

137

3

Aroldis Chapman

85

4

Jordan Walden

54

5

Daniel Bard

51

6

Neftali Feliz

43

7

Bobby Parnell

27

8

Justin Verlander

27

9

Ubaldo Jimenez

21

10

Stephen Strasburg

17

11

Andrew Cashner

15

12

Kyle Farnsworth

7

13

Chris Sale

6

14

Mitchell Boggs

5

15

Jonathan Broxton

4

16

Fernando Rodney

4

17

Santiago Casilla

4

18

Jason Motte

3

19

Alexi Ogando

2

20

Edwin Jackson

2

21

David Price

2

22

Joba Chamberlain

2

23

Brandon Morrow

1

24

Billy Wagner

1

25

Gregory Infante

1

26

Zack Greinke

1

27

Robinson Tejeda

1

Rank

Pitcher

Max Velocity

1

Aroldis Chapman

105.1

2

Neftali Feliz

103.4

3

Henry Rodriguez

103.2

4

Bobby Parnell

102.5

5

Joel Zumaya

102.2

6

Justin Verlander

101.6

7

Jordan Walden

101.5

8

Daniel Bard

100.8

9

Ubaldo Jimenez

100.6

10

Stephen Strasburg

100.4

11

Mitchell Boggs

100.4

12

Chris Sale

100.3

13

Jonathan Broxton

100.2

14

Alexi Ogando

100.2

15

Andrew Cashner

100.1

16

Kyle Farnsworth

100.1

17

Fernando Rodney

100.1

18

Jason Motte

100.1

19

Edwin Jackson

100.1

20

Brandon Morrow

99.8

21

Santiago Casilla

99.7

22

David Price

99.7

23

Billy Wagner

99.7

24

Gregory Infante

99.7

25

Zack Greinke

99.7

26

Joba Chamberlain

99.6

27

Robinson Tejeda

99.5

These numbers are straight from the Gameday PITCHf/x data (accessed via Joe Lefkowitz's site) and have not been park-adjusted. As Mike Fast detailed in a Hardball Times post earlier in the year, there are some stadia in particular that have been showing higher than average velocities in the pitch data. In Fast's article, he mentions Kauffman Stadium, Coors Field, US Cellular Field, Progressive Field, and Fenway Park as being the parks with the highest velocity park factors on average. But, as Fast mentions, parks drift in and out of calibration over the course of a season, so it's impossible to take the velocity from any one game, apply the park factor to it, and get a certain result. Still, I feel pretty strongly that quite a few of these pitchers' numbers were enhanced by park. For example, of the pitchers that hit 100 mph only once, Morrow did it in Cleveland, Infante did it in Chicago, and Tejeda did it in Kansas City. And Chamberlain did it once in Kansas City and once in Chicago. So, please take these with a big old grain of salt.

Oh, one other thing I should mention. You may have been wondering, "Wait, didn't you say that Joel Zumaya hit 100 mph 230 times this year? Why does it say 225 here?" The reason for that is that there were some PITCHf/x errors that duplicated some pitches that I had not corrected for in my July post. I have now, so this should be slightly more accurate.